‘Do you mind if I have a look at your hand?’ David asked. He pinched the skin on the back of Lucy’s hand, very gently, as Holly watched. When the skin didn’t flatten again instantly, Holly knew that Lucy was dehydrated.
‘Has anyone in your family had problems with their thyroid gland?’ he asked.
‘Not that I can think of. Why?’ Lucy asked.
‘Holly told me about your symptoms and I think your thyroid gland’s overactive. What you’re suffering from is something called thyroid storm.’
‘Is it serious?’ Oliver asked.
Yes. If it went untreated, one in ten cases would die.
‘We can do something about it,’ David reassured them both. ‘Holly’s arranged the blood tests, we’ll give you some paracetamol to get your temperature down, a saline drip to help with the dehydration, some antithyroid medication to deal with the excess thyroid hormones and some beta-blockers to help slow your heart rate down to what it should be.’
‘Heart medicine? But…’ Lucy shook her head. ‘What’s wrong with my heart?’
‘It’s all to do with your thyroid gland producing too many hormones. The thyroid gland is just here in your throat, underneath your voice-box,’ David explained.
When he touched Holly’s throat, to demonstrate, her pulse went into overdrive and she only hoped that he couldn’t feel the frantic flutter.
‘It produces the hormones that regulate your body’s energy levels and at the moment it’s producing too much.’
‘That’s why you’re eating so much,’ Holly said, hoping her voice sounded less shaky than it felt. ‘Your body’s metabolism is working too hard, making you feel hungry so you want to eat, but you’re still losing weight.’
‘It’s also making your heart beat faster than it should,’ David added.
So’s mine, Holly thought in desperation. And it shouldn’t be. I don’t want it to.
‘Thyroid problems? Isn’t that something old people get?’ Lucy asked.
‘No. It’s more common in women, and usually it’s young to middle-aged women, in their thirties to fifties,’ Holly said.
‘If you’ve got an overactive thyroid but you haven’t been treated for it, and then you get an infection or you’re under a lot of stress, you can end up with thyroid storm. We’ll need to get you admitted because we’ll need to run more tests,’ David said. When Lucy coughed, he said, ‘We also want to know what’s causing your cough, so we can treat that, too.’ He looked at Holly. ‘Can you ask a porter to bring a fan in to make Lucy more comfortable, please?’
‘You don’t have to do that if it’s going to mean someone else will be all hot and sticky,’ Lucy said.
‘It won’t,’ Holly said. If necessary, she’d use the fan from her own office—she could manage without for a couple of hours. ‘We want your temperature down.’
‘Cool air, tepid sponging and paracetamol should do it,’ David explained with a smile.
Lucy groaned. ‘That’s what you do to babies! I feel such an idiot. I should have gone to see my GP when it all started, but I was busy and I didn’t want to waste his time.’
‘It might have saved you ending up in here,’ Holly agreed wryly. ‘But if it makes you feel any better, I would’ve done exactly the same.’
Yes, David thought bitterly, watching her retreating back. Holly had always done things her way, and to hell with the consequences. Even though he had the nasty suspicion that it was going to rake open old wounds, he knew they had to talk.
An hour and a half later—by which time Holly had calmed down a hysterical toddler and removed a bead from his nose, put a dislocated elbow back in place and removed broken glass from a nasty wound and then stitched it—she was in definite need of caffeine.
‘I’m taking five,’ she told Michelle, and headed for the rest room.
She’d just fixed herself a black coffee from the vending machine, poured the top quarter off and added enough cold water so she could drink it straight down, when David walked in.
‘Strong stuff, is it?’ he asked, seeing her holding the coffee-cup beneath the tap on the water cooler.
‘No. Just temperature regulation,’ she said, and drank her coffee. ‘Ah. I needed that.’ A caffeine fix might just jolt her body back into reality and stop it overreacting any time he came anywhere near her.
‘Holly,’ he said quietly.
Unwillingly, she faced him. Looked him in the eye. Was that regret she saw there? ‘What?’
‘I had no idea you worked here.’
She shrugged. ‘Why should you?’
He sighed. ‘I think we need to talk.’
Way too dangerous. On the ward, she could cope; in a quiet corner in a bar, it would be too much like old times. Just the two of them. ‘There’s nothing to say.’
‘We need to clear the air.’
‘There’s nothing to say,’ she repeated. Nothing either of them could say would change what had happened.
He raked a hand through his hair and she watched his fingers, mesmerised. She could still remember them running through her own hair. Hair that she’d had cut short the moment she’d recognised the truth, to wipe out the memories. Except it hadn’t really worked.
‘What happened between us was a long time ago.’
Was this his idea of an apology? It certainly wasn’t hers!
‘And in the emergency department we need to be able to work as a team.’
He’d phrased that very carefully. Good. Because if he’d dared to say anything about being able to rely on each other, she would have murdered him. ‘Of course,’ she said, as neutrally as she could.
‘We’re going to have to work together. And it’s better if we can do it without…problems.’
Did he think that she was going to weep and wail and ask him why he’d done it? No. Been there, done that, worn the T-shirt—when she was eighteen. She was older. Much wiser. So she could feel relieved that she’d had a very, very lucky escape. And she most certainly wasn’t going to act on that flicker of attraction. Blue eyes spelled danger. She didn’t make the same mistakes twice. ‘Of course,’ she said again.
At least he hadn’t suggested that they could be friends. Because she didn’t think she could go that far. Just in case he was entertaining the idea, she leapt in fast to state the ground rules. ‘We’re perfectly capable of being colleagues.’
‘Good.’
Just to underline the point, she added, ‘How’s Lucy?’
‘Fine. I’ve just had the results back and they’re pretty much what I expected, so I’ve written up the drugs and admitted her. How come she didn’t go to her GP before? She must have had symptoms.’
‘She’s just been promoted. She’s been busy at work, thought maybe she was going through the menopause early and she’d picked up a bug that was doing the rounds.’
‘A pulmonary bug?’
Holly nodded, knowing that a pulmonary infection was the most common event that could spark off a thyroid storm. ‘Thanks for seeing her for me.’
‘Pleasure.’
She wished he hadn’t said that word. She scrunched her cardboard cup into a ball and threw it at the bin. It